Shades Less Suitable
by Kelly123
Summary: A series of ficlets about the Stark kiddos, sort of a crayon challenge: Sansa/Jon/Rob/Arya
1. RED

_Holy cow, am I writing aSoIaF?_

_I must be out of my damn mind, considering I'm only halfway through the first book and have never seen the show, and am therefore for all intents and purposes a total virgin (maiden?) to this fandom. Please forgive me, I depend heavily on the wiki for information because I am dreadfully impatient.  
_

_But alas, this came to me last night and I wasted way too much time better spent being a productive adult into putting colors into words. But this is what you get._

_D: Not mine._

* * *

(red: energy, war, danger, strength, power, determination, passion, desire, and love.)

**Sansa- wine**

She had never had much of a stomach for wine.

Not the light, honeyed liquid which graced the tables at Winterfell of course. That had been sweet and gentle enough for even the children to drink, holding no secrets in its golden depths, clear enough to see the facets cut into the bottom of her cup when she held it to her lips. If she could taste that again she would feel some semblance of safety, of home, of being a Stark...but it was not to be.

For now she was a Stone, and instead of reminders of summer sunshine on her tongue, all she tasted was the bitter burn of the strongwine Littlefinger favored, a tang that left her sputtering at her first swallow and still brought tears to her eyes with every sip she forced herself to take. She didn't trust the way the murky burgundy swirled in her goblet, dark and secretive just like the men who were so fond of it. The same men who were left staggering around her in their cups once the skins had been drained and refilled and drained once more, their lips stained dark and their breath strong with it, close enough that she could smell its pungent scent and feel their moist exhalations against her skin. It left their eyes glassy and leering at her in a way that made her long for the protection of an animal she was supposed to have never seen and brothers she wasn't to ever speak of.

She choked it back now, her throat seizing in protest against the harsh drink she forced upon it. The wineskin she had smuggled from the kitchens into her chambers under her skirts was still almost full and already she felt the effects of what little she had managed to consume flowing through her, buzzing in her veins and swirling dizzingly inside her head. It was horrid, the way her body behaved as though it was not her own, and she found herself contemplating the allure of making oneself feel this way not for the first time. But still she did not stop. Pressing her lips desperately against the cold opening, she drank directly from the skin, no time to fumble with glasses, not for Baelish's baseborn daughter.

Harry the Heir had refused her. Word had come on a raven this very eve after they had supped, and she didn't need to see her "father's" reaction to the letter to know that he would not be pleased. He would come to her tonight, she was sure of that. The way his eyes had lingered, his fingers had pressed, it took little effort to surmise that his desires for her were less than paternal. And now that her one usefulness had been taken from him, he was certain to take what he had desired from her, no longer bound by the promise a betrothal could bring to his house. Petyr would be angry, and he would be drunk, and she would be ready for him.

When her door slowly swung open she took one last desperate swallow and set the skin aside, the darkness hiding it amid her furs. When he approached her, stumbling and with lips drawn back tightly over teeth tinged maroon, she stared him straight in the eye, trying to ignore the sickening way the room spun behind him. The smell of him was repulsive, and when he pressed one hand to her breast, the cold metal of his rings hard and unyielding against her clammy skin, she could not control the violent lurch of her stomach.

_It was red_, the vomit on his doublet, dark like the wine in their bellies and the handprint across her cheek

**Jon-hair**

They had told him to kill her.

He almost shivers at the thought, and for once the cold all around him has nothing to do with such actions. He could have done it, he knows, knows better than any of them how close he had come. He had known she was a girl, and still he had advanced upon her, not stopping until her hood shook loose from around her face. The spark of cold up his spine is due to his disgust at himself, to the fact that he is capable of such actions now, that he is a killer of men, if not of women.

She was, is a wilding, and they say that makes the difference. They think him weak for his balking, for taking a prisoner instead of making a corpse when she would have no qualms about staining the ground dark with their blood had the situation been reversed. But he cannot acquiesce, and so he sets his jaw and hones his blade with purposeful strokes, his words speaking of propriety and honor and duty and all the things a bastard has no business knowing about.

For he cannot tell them, that in the middle of it all, with his sword raised and the clang of metal and cries of death all around them, what it was that gave him pause. Cannot say that _it was red_, the kiss of fire so vibrant against a world of white, that knocked the breath out of him as surely as a mace to the gut.

They would never understand the emotion, searing and twisting as true as any blade, that the mane escaping from beneath her cloak instilled in him, how it reminded him of auburn locks he saw now only in his mind's eye. It was brighter, more offensive than the hair of a little sister who would never really be his, but it was close enough to evoke images of the ones who had been lost to him forever. The dull ache which took up residence in his insides when he lowered his weapon was only worsened when she was brought before him and he could see clearly her face, bunched with anger and dirty with blood and sweat, but still so young, not much older than the girl herself. Just a child, and already...

Word of King's Landing did not come often to The Wall, but he knew enough to lose sleep at night. She might have never wanted him to be her brother, but he had always wanted her as his sister, to care for her as he had done the little ones. She was not like the others, not knowing any defense except running to her lady mother in times of trouble, and he often drew blood from biting the inside of his cheek so hard at the thought of her alone among the lions. He could have kept her safe, he could done what family was meant to, but now he was here, thousands of miles away and lost in a world of ice.

This wild one desired his protection no more than his half-sister ever had, and yet he still felt most compelled to bestow it. As an atonement, even if it was one of which he would never voice aloud, one that was never asked for and would likely mean little to anyone but himself.

He shivered again, wondering if there was anyone left in the South to grant safety for the other girl with red hair, whose only weapons were her smiles and courtesies. The cold crept into his bones as he felt the wildling's hungry eyes on him, for he knew the answer to his question already, knew it as surely as he knew his act of penitence would make no difference either way.

**Rob- eyes**

In the dark, sometimes he thinks he sees them.

Always in the pitch of night, when the rest of his camp is sleeping save for the watchmen camped around them and quiet reigns for once over the raucous clamor of men and steel. Grey Wind is gone, having left as is his custom at night to do his own hunting. He dreams of it, sometimes, of what he can only imagine his direwolf sees, cliffs and woods and other beasts close enough that he can almost feel the hackles raise of the back of-but no. This is not a dream, as those surely are. He is almost certain his eyes are open when he sees them, that something has woken him, though what he is never sure.

For they make no sound, not the snap of a twig underfoot or the exhale of a breath into the wind. Nothing at all but a pair of eyes, glowing crimson in the black of night. Always at a distance, too far to make out anything else, but nevertheless distinct in their ferocity and familiarity. He blinks once, and they are gone, just as they always are, and he is left entirely unsure whether the sighting is welcome or not.

If it is...what he thinks, then what of...

He hardly lets himself finish the thought so heavy is the weight it puts on his chest, but regardless of his effort it always comes back to him, just like the vision, or whatever it is. He tries instead to assure himself of things he knows to be true. He is the King of the North. His mother is safe. His brother is on the wall. His father is dead. But none of it brings him any comfort, and there is so much he doesn't know that he soon runs out of things he does.

Surely there are other animals that roam around them. This is proved true every morning when Grey Wind settles next to him at the fire, muzzle red with the blood of a successful hunt and eyes closing in the lethargy of a belly filled with fresh game. That one of those creatures might be an albino, a freak, as Theon put it, is not too wild a guess. A deer, most likely, or mayhaps even a wolf, a normal one, not a direwolf, and certainly not Ghost.

But the eyes are too bright, and their gaze..._it was red_, too red to be anything else but his half-brother's companion. He longs to call out to them, to cling to anything that would remind him of home, of his family, he dares not admit he is afraid to do so.

If it is Ghost, then where is his master? He knows that the direwolf would never leave his brother of his own will, that the animal's loyalties know no bounds and that nothing but death could part the two. If Ghost was here, then his brother was not on the wall, of that much he was certain. But where then? Dead, his Stark features frosted in an early, icy grave? Or as good as such, a deserter from the Watch and a hunted man for anyone to find?

He both feared and yearned for his brother to join him on his march South. There was none he so wanted beside him in battle as the boy he had learned to spar with, but he knew the cost of forsaking the vows, and that their price would be placed upon him to collect.

And so he bit his tongue when the red eyes appeared to him, and his lips ghosted over a prayer for what he hoped the darkness didn't hold.

**Arya-blood**

_It was red_ when she had seen it had spurting out of men.

Rather pretty, actually. A deep scarlet which soaked steadily through coarse and lush fabric alike, saturating the dull tones worn by peasants and the richer shades of royals with equal disregard, its fatal hue a stain which would never truly be removed entirely. Some of the men tried, beating it out with stones in the river and scrubbing with whatever they could find, but naught for any real good.

Whether it be the life's blood of a dying man, cursing the clothes his killer had stolen off of his body before it was cold on the ground, or blood of their own, wrought from wounds poorly wrapped and ill-tended, it made no difference to her. She wore those bloodstains as a badge of honor, remnants of battles and brawls from which she had walked away with her life, securing her place among the ranks of those older and bigger than herself. She fought to belong, and acquiring her own stains among the secondhand tunics and breeches only made them feel that much more her own, that she deserved to wear them as much as any man she met with steel in her hand.

The steel made it glisten, red reflecting off the metal surface and illuminated in the sunshine as bright as any rose at court. It made her think of the Knight of Flowers, and she wondered how well he would fight here, stripped of his blossoms and pretty steed, fighting for a chance to draw a next breath and not a purse full of silver and gold. She could make him bleed, she thought, given a chance. They all bleed the same, bastard boys and knights of the Kingsguard, it was the same red that came from a man's flesh, slick and shiny against his skin.

It did not scare her, not matter how much blood there was. Not when it came bubbling from the mouth of a man skewer deep in his belly with her blade, spittle flying in her face as she wrenched Needle free, nor spewing from a raw stump where a limb had been attached moments ago. Blood was life, and blood was death, and anyone who thought differently was a fool.

But this...this was an entirely different matter.

This blood was darker, more rust than ruby, and something in the deepening of the shade made her feel weak and utterly naïve to its nature. She felt it before she saw it in the early morning as she slipped away to make water, sticky on her thighs and then her fingertips, the smell of it sharp and familiar as she raised her hand closer to her face while her eyes adjusted to the near darkness. For a moment she remained frozen, a panicked confusion coming over her as she realized what was happening. It was everywhere, and the sight of it on her breeches and on her skin made a part of her body deep below her stomach twist painfully and left her clutching for something, anything to hold onto, leaving dark fingerprints in her wake.

This couldn't be happened, not to her. She was not a quivering maiden, waiting anxiously to flower to be given in marriage to some worthless lord and live a life of stitches and whelping. She was faceless, a ghost, a weasel, a killer, anything but some highborn girl scared to death of a bit of red between her legs.

But blood was death, and in the silence of that sunrise, she felt the weight of it a thousand times more than any time she had taken a life.

* * *

_Well, that was a color fic, about the elder Stark children (and Jon), roughly 600 words apiece. So, yeah...what do you think?_


	2. ORANGE

_I am quite shocked to be back here._

_I had planned to continue this, maybe making it through the rainbow, but...  
_

_Well, writing this second piece was a TOTAL BEATING. I am utterly disappointed with how it turned out and I feel it strays from the pattern set by the first far too much. Alas, it is what it is, and at least it is done. I doubt I will be making a third trip back (especially for yellow).  
_

_There is no particular order or universe to place these in. They come and go willy-nilly.  
_

_D: Not mine._

* * *

(Orange: enthusiasm, fascination, happiness, creativity, determination, attraction, success, encouragement, and stimulation)

**Sansa-stains**

It was ruined, utterly ruined!

She slams the door to her chambers shut behind her...or rather, she intends to slam it, but it is quite a heavy door and she doesn't have the strength its weight requires for such an act. All the same, she feels her dire circumstances deserve more impact than the soft click she receives as it slides shut. The muted closing only serves to mock her fury further, and in retaliation for its treachery she turns and pounds on the door's smooth wooden surface with hands _stained orange_. Her fists come down hard and fast in a manner she knew was most unbecoming for a lady of her station, but in that moment she simply did not care.

Her sister threw fruit and no one cared. She acted no better than a wilding in the dwelling of the King, and everyone pretends otherwise, like she was somehow exempt from such rules. If they gave no regard for the loss of decorum, then why should she? Propriety or honor or any such things mattered not to her any longer, for her lovely morning had turned positively dreadful.

The dress and the day and her life, all of them, a complete disaster.

The dress though, especially. Such a lovely gown too, and so unlike any of the ones she had brought with her from the North. Her companions had said it was particularly pretty against the milky whiteness of her skin and the auburn sheen of her hair, a lovely contrast of cream and honey for all to behold. She looked the part of a princess, for certain, and surely the prince could not help but to fall in love with how beautiful she looked today. Oh, to think upon her sweet prince...how her heart trilled simply at the mention of him!

And now she would never know if it would have pleased him or not, when to please him was all she ever desired, because her sister had to go and ruin it!

She always ruined everything!

Dipping her hands into her wash basin, she began to pry the bits of rind from under her nails where they were embedded following her attempts to scrape the orange from her dress. As the water took on a faintly peach tint, her anger flared, and she was struck with an overwhelming desire to dump the basin over the perpetrator's head. Her Septa would say that she was much too old for childish notions, but she couldn't help the surge of desire that overtook her as she wondered once again if the grey-eyed wench was for true her sister.

For no two girls could possibly be so different as they, and in every possible way. Where she was fair and polite as a proper lady should be, the other was bore a darker complexion was as ill-mannered as though she had not been raised high-born. Not to mention that she thought lovely, her sister found boring and useless. Like dresses, for the younger of the two would probably prefer a pair of their brother's breeches and a dirty tunic to fine fabrics hanging in her wardrobe. She placed no value on lovely new dresses, even those that one received as a gift and didn't even get a chance to show to their betrothed because their infuriating sister ruined them with an orange!

Stupid orange, she thought, fingering the stain which stood in stark contrast to the ivory of the gown. Stupid sister, she felt, wishing she had a piece of fruit of her own to throw back. Stupid...oh, everything, she wanted to scream as she ripped the dress off of herself.

**Jon-sunrise **

He was alone as he watched the sky, dark and _stained orange_ in the distance.

Sleep had not come to him that night, no matter how tightly he closed his eyes, bloodshot from the effort of refusing tears, and buried himself beneath his furs. His body was weary from exhaustion and his head felt heavy from the wine, but his mind would not be quieted. Thoughts came to him unbidden and he could not turn them away.

He had known that the King's arrival was sure to bring change for them all, that their realm's ruler would not leave his throne simply for want of his old friend's companionship, no matter how close they had been as boys. But when the truth of the visit was exposed he was blindsided by how quickly the news had changed everything. The strained matter of his own existence at the castle had always been on a shaky precipice, and the winds of change which His Grace brought with him from King's Landing left the bastard teetering precariously. He thought back to being made to sit separated from his siblings while they had supped this evening and felt the first bubblings of bitterness start to simmer once more within him at the memory. Bitterness, and yet guilt at feeling so, when he knew in truth that was his place. His brothers and youngest sister might forget at times that he was only a bastard, but he never could. And his seat that night only showed that the rest of the kingdom couldn't either.

But even despite the conflict of the two emotions ebbing and flowing within him, there was something else that lingered more heavily in the pit of his stomach which he knew to be the true cause of his unrest. Try as he might, he could not stop his thoughts from finding their way back to his Uncle and the words the two had exchanged, words that echoed endlessly in his head as he tried to block them out with the steady in and out of Ghost's breathing. It was too quiet in his chambers to find any real relief, though, and after what must have been hours it seemed pointless to continue trying to do what seemed impossible. Sick of lying abed with eyes that refused to stay closed and a weight in his heart he could not shake, he finally acquiesced. Dressing, he left his chambers silently to exchange warm stone for the early chill and orange sky of the outdoors.

He had meant what he told his Uncle. With every fiber of his being he had meant the words. He would never father another Snow, couldn't bear to put the name of a bastard on any son of his own. Ben had said he didn't understand, but his uncle was the one who couldn't grasp the truth behind the statement. A trueborn son, even the third of his house, would never bear the shame of being baseborn. His entire life had been spent in disgrace, and the Wall offered him the only chance he might ever have to be free of it.

And yet, as the light around him slowly changed, he felt the first tendrils of unease unfurl within him as streaks of orange painted the sky.

Darkness dissipating, he narrowed his eyes at the rising sun. Winter was coming, he felt it as surely as even in the frigid morning air. He might not have a house of his own, the words of his father's were as true to him as to any of his half-siblings, mayhaps more.

Let it come, for he would be at the wall to greet it.

**Robb-shadows**

He wasn't scared, not truly.

At least, that was what he said aloud, but his chin trembled a bit when he uttered the words, and he knew in his heart it to be a lie. He hoped the others couldn't tell in the dark though, for he was to be Lord of the castle when he was grown, and Lord's weren't scared of anything, or lie, either.

It was only a small tale, really, for though he was in fact frightened, it was only a little bit. It was dark and damp down in the crypts, the air stale and heavy with a sense of ill-boding that slithered over his skin like an eel. The sconces on the walls burned low from its weight, casting eerie shadows in dark corners and bathing the group of children huddled under their light with a muted glow which was _stained orange_. Unnatural, jaundiced shades illuminated their faces as they took in the shapes of the Starks who had come before them, exposing the fear they tried to mask for what it was.

He was less scared than his little sister, but that wasn't much to speak of. The wide-eyed girl who favored their mother so strongly was only six and scared of everything. She did not even try to pretend otherwise, and the slightest of sounds had sent her fleeing to his side only moments after they had entered. He felt rather like father when he put his arm around her trembling shoulders and whispered assuring words into her ear. It was a nice feeling, and he drew up his spine as buried her face into his tunic, unable to look upon the seated figures before them any longer. He kept his eyes glued to their stone faces though, for he felt another gaze heavy on him, daring his to falter.

For certain he was more scared than his father's ward, the elder boy who had proposed they come down here in the first place. It wasn't quite true to say that they were forbidden to visit the chambers underneath the castle, but he knew his mother would be displeased to learn of it. The Ironborn boy had teased him, saying that he would run crying to the lady at the first sign of a specter, but he had sworn upon the old gods that he would do no such thing. He wished he had not been so hasty to concede to the challenge now though, as orange-tinged light flickered over an ancestor in such a way that was most unsettling, and he hoped desperately it was only the glow of the flame making its eyes gleam so.

He could not be sure, though, about his half-brother. The dark-haired boy was as solemn as ever as they moved silently down the corridors, his features not betraying a single emotion as he gazed upon each face as resolutely as the next. While their sister's and his own hair gleamed like copper under the flame, the bastard's seemed to only deflect it, leaving him clothed in darkness as he stood to the side in the shadows as was his custom. Black suited him, and mayhaps he never looked quite as at home in the castle as when half-concealed by shadows.

But when he took a torch from the wall to pass to his brother, a slicker of gold passed over the other boy's face, and with it revealed the half-smile so rarely exposed to the light. It was gone in an instant, but he was certain the crypts were not half so frightening as they had been the moment before.

**Arya-cats**

She didn't think it had even seen her.

Quiet as a shadow and light as a feather in her work, she took sure, surreptitious steps on the balls of her feet as she made her way towards the ginger feline. It didn't so much as twitch a whisker at her approach, just sat there bathed in the muted sunlight, letting the warmth linger on its fur. Carelessly, it lifted a paw to its mouth and began to clean the dirt from between its toes, a smile breaking out on her own face as she drew closer and closer. She would surely have this one, she was close enough to see the stripes _stained orange _in its tabby coat. The same dust the cat removed from its own paw was scarcely disturbed beneath her feet as she moved with all the grace of a water dancer, never making even the smallest of sounds.

Surely, when she finally managed to complete the task he set before her, he would be proud of her. Upon capturing the cat she would return it to her dancing instructor, hissing and spitting at them both before he gave it a moment's glance and jerked his chin upward to consent her to release it. He would frown at her all the while, making some comment about the scratches she had acquired along the way or the length of time her conquest had taken her, but there would be something like a smile lurking in his eyes. Afterwards her skin would burn from the wounds and her body ache from new steps he had deemed her capable to learn, dips and turns and leaps that would improve her hunting. She would collapse into her pillows with exhaustion later, muscles twitching as she practiced even in her sleep.

Her dreams held a different partner to dance with, though.

Did he know how to twist into the darkness of shadows and make himself disappear? Would he have liked her to teach him? What would he say of the new way she handled her Needle, what of her dancing lessons? What else would he have shown her, in the lessons of his own she would have insisted he give her if they had remained at Winterfell?

He would have been proud of her, of that much she was certain. He would have laughed at the scratches on her hands but still helped her to bandage them with his gentle touch, promising not to tell her mother how she had come to receive them. He would have smiled at her, that secret little half-grin reserved for just her, his favorite, while he mussed her hair. He would have laughed at her, surely, but his laughter never hurt the way other people's did.

She longed for that laugh, so different from anyone else in their family that she wondered if he must have gotten it from his mother. It was not the sort of laugh that women should have though, and that made her yearn to take as her own all the more.

Advancing on the cat, orange as a pumpkin and lithe as the tigers in the stories Nan had told her as a babe, her heart beat faster, almost as though he was there watching her. She could imagined she could feel his eyes, as gray as her own, watching her solemnly as she crept along the wall. The cat realized her presence a split second too late, contorting itself in her grip violently with all the fury it knew. Blood ran from her hands as she clutched it to her, but she minded not.

All she could hear was that laugh, echoing in her ears.

* * *

_Orange was the color of my high-school. I am prejudged to dislike it._


End file.
